


our gentle sin

by swansaloft



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-04
Updated: 2016-06-04
Packaged: 2018-07-12 03:54:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7084600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swansaloft/pseuds/swansaloft
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every syllable of her confession knots together like a rope that tethers them, making their relationship feel less tenuous every second. Making Emma feel like maybe she hasn’t lost Regina after all. Like maybe what they have is stronger than anything she could do to break it.</p><p>Emma, who breaks everything.</p><p>(Set approximately post-5x21. Regina shuts out Emma. Emma isn't having it.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	our gentle sin

**Author's Note:**

> Post-5x21/finale fic. The first bit of the finale happens (e.g. Hook running into the diner, which I am approximately 96% sure happened in the finale), but that is all. I know it has been done by others, and probably better, but I wanted to take a shot at it. It was supposed to be a short little piece, but the words just sort of fell out of my fingers.
> 
> Title from "Take Me to Church" (technically by Hozier, but the Alice Kristiansen cover is everything).
> 
> I need to give credit to two authors. First, to Sarah J. Maas, because the idea for disappearing/reappearing notes came directly from _A Court of Mist and Fury_. Second, to Lisa Kleypas for being a goddess of romance and for writing Blue-Eyed Devil, which contains [this quote](http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/182896-i-no-longer-believed-in-the-idea-of-soul-mates). It has been one of my favorites for years, and it was a lot of the inspiration behind this piece.

Regina gazes at her with dead eyes and vanishes wordlessly in a cloud of purple smoke, and it hurts worse than the time she’d punched her in the face, back when they were made up of fists and snarls. A lifetime ago, before they’d learned to speak the language of smiles and support and trust.

 

Emma wonders how much of that trust went up in smoke alongside her.

 

Emma ignores the stares of their audience, the lunch crowd at Granny’s never guessing they would get a show along with their meal. She grabs Killian’s hand, trying to pull him back to the house before they’re surrounded, but she fails. Everyone is closing in with hugs and exclamations and so many questions, her head spins.

 

(How could he have been so fucking _stupid_ , to come in like that, to not give her the time to tell Regina, to prepare her, to explain. They’d gone over this, but he had thought it more important that he attempt to jump into the thick of things rather than hang back and let her do what she asked. Like maybe it wouldn’t be that big of a deal.

 

Like _he_ knows Regina better than she does.

 

Like he knows better than she does, period.

 

Something in the pit of her stomach burns.)

 

She waits. It feels _wrong_ , like someone is constantly pricking at her skin with needles, but she waits. She gives Regina twenty-four hours of space and time to process that her soulmate is gone forever while Emma’s...Killian is back from the Underworld, through no effort of her own. Practically wrapped up for her in a giant red bow.

 

(She can’t call him her True Love, she _can’t_. It’s like her tongue is frozen, and what kind of test weighs your love by seeing if you’d risk your life to save a person? She risks her life for others all the _time_. It’s literally right there in the title the damn storybook had given her - the Savior. One who saves. But it makes him happy to think the test meant something, and when he’s happy, she’s happy.

 

Or at least, she tries to be.

 

It’ll be easier when Regina is speaking to her and the world makes sense again.)

 

She deals with her parents and everyone else who decides to stop by the house after they finally escape the diner. The town is drawn to the house that should be wreathed in celebration, instead of the one in mourning across town.

 

After a while, her parents comply with her request to start shooing everyone away, pleading a need for privacy, and Regina is the only reason the town agrees not to hold a Welcome Back party for Hook.

 

Emma would never wish Regina pain, not for the world, but she feels a fleeting moment of gratefulness for Robin’s death. She spends the rest of the night feeling like the worst sort of friend, and she sleeps with her phone in her hand in case Regina decides to call.

 

She doesn’t.

 

She tries to call Regina twice the next day, once in the morning and once during her lunch break.

 

After work, she picks up a bottle of wine - expensive, the kind she never buys but Regina does - as a peace offering and pulls up to Mifflin. (It is wholly inadequate, nothing but a symbol, but she hopes it will be enough to gain her admittance for at least a moment. That’s all she needs. She just needs to see Regina, to be given the opportunity to talk to her, to tell her, even if Regina slams the door in her face when she’s finished. At least she’ll _know_.) She marches up the steps determinedly, but her hand betrays her by shaking when she presses the doorbell.

 

Pleaseplease _please_ -

 

“Go away, Emma. No one wants _you_ here.”

 

She doesn’t see where the disembodied, accented voice is coming from - Zelena must have used some trickery to throw it - but the words make her stumble back a step, nearly losing her grip on the bottle.

 

She has no way of knowing if Zelena has delved into her psyche or her history and chosen that phrase on purpose, or if she’d just gotten lucky and happened upon the exact words that will invoke a hundred memories of brush-offs and abandonments and lonely nights spent wishing on every star she could see until she learned in third grade science that stars were just balls of gas burning thousands of miles away, and no wonder wishing on them never got her anywhere.

 

( _No one wants you here. No one wants you. No one will ever want you_.)

 

She leaves the wine sitting on the porch beside the door. She contemplates writing a note, but all her words have disappeared.

 

Days pass, and Emma can feel the words building up inside her again, can feel them stacking on top of each other and needing to spill out, feels the way her throat protests against any words that aren’t “I’m sorry” and “What can I do to make this better?” and “Please, please talk to me, tell me I haven’t broken you, broken us, broken everything.”

 

Henry and Snow give her enough information that she knows Regina hasn’t spun off into her homicidal past self, so that’s a relief, at least. (Not that Emma was ever really worried about that. Not really. Regina has come too far, struggled too much to revert to the Evil Queen now.)

 

She begins to panic when they are closing in on a week, and Regina still refuses to answer her thrice-daily phonecalls. Morning, noon, and night. Enough to catch Regina no matter what her current schedule, but not so much as to warrant a restraining order. Hopefully.

 

It’s Saturday, and Henry’s over for lunch with her. Hook is out on his ship, having a two-day sailing trip with “the guys.” (Emma didn’t even bother to ask who that entailed, but from the looks of it, it was going to involve so many barrels of rum, she practically had a sympathy hangover just looking at it.) When noon rolls around, she goes to make her daily lunchtime phone call attempt to Regina, but Henry looks at her strangely and frowns.

 

“She’s not going to answer.”

 

“Well, she hasn’t so far, but I’m nothing if not optimistic,” Emma says with a fake, fake smile, and Henry only shakes his head.

 

“No, I mean- she destroyed her phone days ago. Said she was sick of everyone calling to say they were sorry about Robin.”

 

Emma blinks at him. She suddenly wants to lash out at him for not letting her know this sooner. But it isn’t his fault, and rationally, she knows that.

 

It isn’t his fault that for all Regina knows, Emma’s been ignoring her for the better part of a week. And that thought suddenly makes her utterly frantic.

 

“I have to do something.”

 

Emma pushes away from the table, her chair scraping against the tile. She’s glad they’re nearly done eating and that her son is old enough to entertain himself while she thinks things through.

 

Regina had already sent a message through Snow the day after her disastrous visit that Emma shouldn’t visit Mifflin again until she was invited. She’d been planning to try again, but since it came directly from Regina this time, rather than her sister, she was going to do her best to respect it.

 

Emma parses through her options as she pushes open the door to the study she’s never used and plops down on the fancy leather chair.

 

(And what the hell is her life, even, that she has a _study_.)

 

There’s this really nice corner desk with dark cherry wood and a glossy finish, a fancy little place for pens built right into it.

 

Pens.

 

 _Writing_.

 

That’s it.

 

She’s already tried email, of course. Just once, asking Regina to call her, just in case she was still checking her email.

 

But this is better.

 

She looks around but doesn’t find any paper to go with the pens, and she thunders back down the stairs to look for Henry, who has migrated to the living room.

 

“Hey, kid.”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“You have a piece of paper I could borrow?”

 

“Sure.”

 

He sidles over to his backpack and fishes out a sheet of blank notebook paper for her.

 

“You’re the best,” she exclaims, and presses a quick kiss to his forehead before she ascends the stairs once again and pushes into the study.

 

She sits down in the chair, places the paper in front of her, and picks up a pen.

 

And she thinks.

 

And thinks.

 

Emma ponders what to say for over an hour, until her head starts to pound. She writes draft after draft, from the simplest to the most complex sentences, from a single line to several paragraphs.

 

Her hand aches and her brain is crowded with all the words she wants to say.

 

But none of this is going to work if Regina refuses to write back. She’ll have no idea if the message even reached her or not.

 

It should. They’ve done this before. Emma had been delighted by the trick when Regina had taught it to her: The ability to “poof” a piece of paper - or other tiny, lightweight objects - to another magic user, no matter where they were. It would land within two feet of them, guaranteed. It was especially handy for communication back in the Enchanted Forest. You wrote the letter, sent it to the person, then they magically erased your message and replied on the same parchment. Delivery was instantaneous. (“You know, I read somewhere that pouring out your heart to a sheet of paper that writes back could be a bad idea” - “Your endless ability to make Harry Potter references never fails to astound, Miss Swan.” - “Hey, you’re the one who always understands them.”) She sent Regina random notes for a good week. About the occasional bit of Harry Potter trivia, about something Henry said, about a flying monkey sighting. Regina even occasionally replied, especially when she wrote about Henry.

 

However, despite the convenience of the method, there is no way to guarantee she remembers and executes the spell correctly unless Regina writes back. Which she might not. So, better to start with lower stakes.

 

Finally, frustrated and desperate, Emma waves her hand and clears away all the words of her latest draft. Instead, she writes three simple letters - _Hey._ \- and taps the sheet twice, sending it off to its destination.

 

She closes her eyes for a few seconds, takes a deep breath, and opens them. She feels the quick sink of disappointment in her belly when the paper doesn’t reappear. Ridiculous. It hasn’t been long enough for Regina to write back, even if she’d wanted to. If she responds at all, it’ll likely be in an hour or two, after she thinks it over.

 

Emma really, really hopes she thinks it over and doesn’t just throw the note in the trash automatically.

 

She is getting up to go grab a sandwich - she really hadn’t eaten much at all during lunch - when the paper reappears, right there on the desk where it was sitting when she’d sent it.

 

Emma isn’t quite sure if she sits back down of her own volition or if her knees actually give out. She doesn’t care.

 

She grapples for the sheet of paper, and it takes a couple tries for her clumsy fingers to pick up the single sheet off the polished wooden surface

 

  * _Hey._




 

She would think she’d made an error, that this was some sort of magical Return to Sender situation. Except the note is in black ink instead of the blue she used, and the neat loops of the script are far more elegant than her chicken scratch.

 

She knows that writing. She’s seen it in a signature on a hundred sheets of paper, has read the little notes she sometimes sticks in Henry’s lunch bag when she sends him to school.

 

Regina.

 

Emma can’t exactly breathe. She tries and winds up making a sound that might be a shout or a sob or something else entirely. She fumbles for the pen, using her other hand to clear Regina’s answer off the paper before she write her next message.

 

  * _It’s Emma._




 

She sends it off, and this time, she stares at the vacant spot on the table, never looking away for more time than it takes her to blink. She doesn’t know how much time passes before the note reappears, but reappear it does.

 

  * _I gathered as much._




 

  * _I wasn’t sure, when you wrote back._




 

  * _Yes, well, just don’t say any version of “I’m sorry,” or I will personally find you and strangle you myself._




 

Emma smiles at that little bit of fire. She’s had nightmares of Regina sitting in her living room, staring at a television, eyes as flat and emotionless as they were the last time Emma saw them.

 

She can deal with Regina’s anger or disappointment. It’s Regina defeated that makes her crazy, that makes everything else fade away until all she can focus on is devising a way to make the world right again. And a Regina who tosses empty threats at her is still her Regina - her best friend.

 

For a moment, she contemplates writing back with just those two words. However, she finds it extremely improbable that Regina would actually follow through on her promise to appear and all too likely that she would simply cease to write back. That thought dispels the idea immediately, because Regina _is_ writing now. Emma can think clearly for the first time in days, and her chest is bubbling with something like hope.

 

  * _Noted. Before we continue this correspondence_ (Emma pauses to double check the spelling on her phone, feels a quick surge of accomplishment when she realizes she’s gotten it right), _are there any other phrases and/or words I should avoid?  
_

  * “ _Is there anything I can do?” has been known to send me into fireball fits as of late._




 

  * _Wow, it’s a really good thing you upped the fire department budget last year, huh? It’ll probably come in handy when you accidentally set fire to the mansion. Also, thank you for pointing that out, because that question was definitely on my list.  
_

  * _As if I can’t control my own magical fire. You know me better than that. And what, exactly, were you planning to do? He can’t come back, so there are no rescue missions to embark upon. And I assure you, we already have enough “condolences casseroles” to last six months, even if I trusted your cooking enough to accept one if you brought it.  
_

  * _I don’t know where you got this idea that I was totally useless in the kitchen. You know I’d lived on my own for the better part of a decade before you met me, right?_




 

  * _That doesn’t mean you’re a good cook. Plenty of people live on TV dinners and grilled cheese.  
_

  * _Just because one appreciates the culinary genius of a simple grilled cheese does not mean one is unable to make anything more complicated than that.  
_

  * _I still don’t believe you._




 

  * _That’s because you’ve never tasted my maqlubah. Actually, I’m pretty sure you’ve never had my cooking at all.  
_

  * _That is because I’m not suicidal.  
_

  * _You might need to check your memory. I do believe_ _you_ _are the one who attempted to poison_ _me_ _via food.  
_

  * _Doesn’t mean I can’t still be careful._




_I have to go now. But thank you.  
_

  * _For?  
_

  * _Talking to me like I’m a person.  
_

  * _Anytime._




 

*

 

They write a few times throughout the next day. Nothing important. But enough to know that Regina is coming around, that eventually she will give Emma a chance. Enough that Emma is able to focus on her work again. David will probably be relieved. She’s able to be much more productive when she isn’t checking her phone for missed calls every two minutes and half-listening for it to ring every second between checks.

 

*

 

Emma jolts awake in the middle of the night, and the clock tells her it’s a little after 2. She frowns and turns over, only to have a paper crinkle under her cheek when she lays her head back down on the pillow.

 

What the-?

 

She blinks and rubs her eyes, squinting to make out the writing on the paper. It’s a full moon, so after a moment of letting her eyes adjust, she can read it by just the light of the window.

 

  * _Did you mean it?_  





Emma blinks. She’s awake now, mind whirring with possibilities, but she comes up empty.

 

  * _Mean what?  
_

  * _You said you would be there to talk to me anytime. Would that include now?  
_

  * _Yes._




 

Emma presses so hard that the point of the pencil tears through the paper, and she doesn’t even bother to fix it before tapping the the missive away.

 

She expects to have to wait a few minutes for Regina to write down whatever it is that’s troubling her.

 

What she doesn’t expect is for the woman to appear in her room less than five seconds after the paper disappears.

 

It’s as if she teleported the instant she received Emma’s answer, before she could talk herself out of it.

 

That is likely the case, as Regina looks almost as startled as Emma to find herself in the dark bedroom with the large, open window and the bed with a set of sheets that actually match the comforter.

 

Emma nearly can’t believe her eyes, and she closes them forcefully, purposefully evens out her breathing.

 

She opens her eyes, and Regina is still standing there - _really, truly_ standing there - and Emma can’t feel the tips of her fingers.

 

Regina clears her throat. “Hi.”

 

“Hi,” Emma returns. Her voice is rusty from sleep, and she reaches over to take a drink from her glass on the nightstand, suddenly aware she’s sprawled atop the bedding wearing nothing but a tanktop and underwear.

 

(Emma knows Regina has seen her in almost the exact same outfit once before. Had held Emma’s gaze with such determined intensity that Emma had _known_ it was to prevent herself from looking down. She’d failed. Her eyes had dropped for a single, telltale instant, and Emma had felt goosebumps rise along her calves and up her thighs, her stomach clenching. At that one, brief moment of power she’d had over this woman who had come for the sole purpose of lording her own over Emma.

 

But she doesn’t think about that. Ever. She can’t, or it will fuck up everything.)

 

Regina looks...well, it’s too dark for Emma to tell for sure. But she thinks she has shadows under her eyes, probably. She doesn’t look particularly thin or unhealthy, though, she just looks...sad. Lost, maybe.

 

Like she’s had a soulmate stolen from her too soon.

 

But she came here for something, and Emma is going to do whatever she can to provide it. Even if she’s not allowed to ask what, exactly, it is she needs to do.

 

“So, I’m gonna-” she gestures awkwardly to the dresser and then to her bare legs, and Regina jolts and moves back a step.

 

“Yes, of course.”

 

She looks down at the floor while Emma crosses to the dresser, fishes out a pair of flannel pajama pants, and pulls them on.

 

“Do you want to head downstairs? I can make us tea. Or something stronger. Whatever.”

 

“I’m fine.”

 

Emma presses her lips together at that.

 

“Okay, well, you can sit on the other side of the bed, then, if this is going to be a sleepover-style chat.”

 

Regina’s lips quirk up in the ghost of a smile, and Emma feels like she’s done something right.

 

Emma returns to her spot on the bed, and Regina slides gently onto on the other side and matches Emma’s crossed-leg position. Emma is suddenly grateful for the fact that she changed the sheets today and the linen won’t smell like Killian.

 

(The fact that she’d done this for herself, before she’d known she would be having company? That before Regina’s interruption, she’d been having the best night’s rest she’d had in months? Those are more unnecessary thoughts she refuses to let mean anything.)

 

“Mal dropped by to offer me some of her sleeping curse today,” Regina begins conversationally.

 

Emma recoils. “The hell? You have a job. You have a _son_. She should know you’re not just going to-”

 

Regina shakes her head. “Not a regular sleeping curse. Diluted. It leaves you lethargic and somewhat blissful, or at least takes the edge off whatever pain you happen to be feeling.”

 

Emma frowns. “So, what, she gave you some...Enchanted Forest drugs?”

 

“Essentially. I have no intention of using them. But it was her way of showing she still cares. She isn’t exactly the hover-and-make-chicken-soup type. Thank goodness.”

 

(“Were you two ever-” hovers on the tip of her tongue like it does any time Regina talks about Maleficent. But Emma refuses to ask about it on a good day.

 

This may be a day she has been praying for for a week, but a good day, it is not.)

 

“That’s...interesting,” she says instead. “But what does it have to do with anything?”

 

“Nothing, really. It’s just something different that happened. Something that wasn’t sitting alone in my room, playing with Robyn, or talking to Henry about school.”

 

“You realize that if you shut people out, you won’t be able to interact with them?”

 

“I don’t want to talk to anyone. I just don’t want to be alone either.”

 

Emma only nods, understands that feeling better than she could ever explain with words.

 

“I’m going back to work on Monday. I’m sick of people looking at me like I’m about to revert to the Evil Queen any moment.”

 

Emma frowns. “I thought you said you hadn’t been talking to anyone.”

 

“Now. But there were those two days before - before Hook. And even after that, people kept calling me to say how _sorry_ they were. They brought us food. People I never really knew, that Robin never knew. They didn’t really even care, not most of them. It was just a way to check in - ‘Nope, it doesn’t seem like she’s going to murder anyone today, we’re in the clear.’ I started getting so fed up with it that I probably caused more alarm than I alleviated. When Sister Astrid brought a plate of brownies, I practically bit her head off. That’s when Zelena and I decided we’d be better off without visitors for a while. Except for Snow and Henry, of course.”

 

Emma flinches, knowing that she should be grateful that Snow and Regina’s relationship has developed to the point where her mother would be trusted with such a position. It had worked out well for Emma, too, had enabled her to keep tabs on Regina even when she wasn’t allowed to see her personally. She could ask her mother the questions that she couldn’t ask Henry.

 

But still, it stings. More than it should.

 

Almost as if she can read Emma’s thoughts, Regina takes a deep breath, looks down at her lap, and quietly says, “I’m sorry. For...avoiding you this past week. But I thought of you, and I- at first, I nearly wanted to flay you alive. For getting everything I wanted. For having your happy ending handed to you on a platter right after I’d lost mine.” She pauses. “It isn’t your fault. I realized that, eventually. Hell, I knew it from the beginning. That doesn’t make it easier. But if it helps you feel better, this isn’t about you. It’s entirely about me.”

 

( _I’m not sure I even want this so-called happy ending._ )

 

But no, god, she shouldn’t even be saying that in her head, much less to someone who would probably kill to get the chance she’s been given. She would sound like the most ungrateful bitch who ever walked the planet.

 

She would hate herself, too.

 

(Still, sometimes she dreams a quick succession of flashes: of tears and clasped hands and “I can give you one,” and two seconds of her breath catching in her lungs and her stomach in freefall when she hadn’t known what exactly Regina was offering. Over and over until she wakes up to scratchy eyes and a damp pillow in the morning.)

 

“Honestly? No, not really. I can take you hating me. God knows, we’ve had enough practice at that,” she says with a wry grin, and Regina matches it with a slightly weaker one. “I just...it’s one of those things where you want to do everything you can to help. But all you can really do is do nothing.”

 

Regina reaches forward across the bed, grasping her knee.

 

“You’re helping now.”

 

“Good.” Emma smiles, and Regina gazes back, and she removes her hand and Emma wants to scoot forward, to grab it back, but she doesn’t.

 

Regina yawns, covering her mouth, and her eyes droop in away that tells Emma she hasn’t been sleeping as much as she should.

 

But then again, she hasn’t been, either. Emma shifts back until she’s lying on her pillow, staring across the bed at the other woman.

 

She wants Regina to stay longer, but she can’t think of what to say to keep her here.

 

“Do you mind if I sleep here?”

 

Emma blinks.

 

“I mean, in the house. In Henry’s room, if necessary. I just think that if I stare at my own walls for another minute, my head is going to explode.”

 

“Sure, of course.”

 

“I have more things to say, though. Before I go.”

 

“You can tell me anything.”

 

Regina stretches out and puts her head on the pillow opposite Emma’s. Then looks down and frowns, as if realizing what she just did.

 

“Oh, god, I’m not lying in pirate drool, am I?”

 

Her voice is low and threatening, Emma chokes out a startled laugh. “No, you’re in luck. I just changed the sheets today.”

 

“Small mercies,” Regina mutters under her breath, then yawns again. She stares up at the ceiling, and eventually, Emma turns away and does the same.

 

“Your mother offered to listen if I ever need to talk, and don’t tell her I said this, but she’d probably be great at it. But while we’ve come a long way, I just...can’t. With her. And Zelena and I are still feeling each other out, not really up for heart-to-hearts.”

 

“So I’m your last resort, got it.”

 

Regina hesitates. “No, you were the one I wanted to talk to from the beginning. The others were the backups; I couldn’t make myself talk to them. You...you’re the one who needs to know. You’re the one who knows _me._ Like you said, special, right?”

 

(“Unique, maybe even special.” And she’d never dreamed then that Regina would ever echo her words back to her.)

 

Emma feels the beginnings of tears sting her eyes, and she can’t make her tongue form words beyond a rusty, “Yeah.”

 

Regina shifts, and Emma waits, and there is no sound but the soft clicking of the nighttime insects in the trees, floating in through the window.

 

“When I was young,” Regina starts. Her voice is a fraction above a whisper, and she is facing the wall opposite Emma. But the night is quiet and her words are shooting stars traversing the space between them. “All I wanted was a family I could love. I wanted to prove it could be done. I wanted to prove that a family could be like in the storybooks, that it didn’t have to be a place where hate and fear accompanied love, to the point where I never knew which I felt more. I would dream about it sometimes, go out to the stables and brush the horses and imagine what it would be like to fall in love with someone and eventually have their children. How _safe_ I would feel in that love, and how I would make sure my children felt it, too.”

 

She pauses, taking a breath while Emma barely dares to. Every syllable of her confession knots together like a rope that tethers them, making their relationship feel less tenuous every second. Making Emma feel like maybe she hasn’t lost Regina after all. Like maybe what they have is stronger than anything she could do to break it.

 

(Emma, who breaks everything. Who breaks windows and locks, faces and hearts, laws and decades-long curses.)

 

“I knew even then it would never happen. Sometimes I cried. It was the only place I could risk doing so, because my mother refused to step foot in the stables. She hated the smell. If she wanted to summon me from there, she would send a servant. Then one night she broke her own rule, and my life was set on this path. I made the choices I did; I became a villain. And now here I am. A villain no longer, but still stuck with the curse of one. I loved Henry as much as I could, but I failed. For so long, he looked at me, and in his eyes, I saw everything I used to feel when I looked at my mother.”

 

“He hasn’t felt that way about you in a long time.”

 

Regina sniffs, and it’s the first time Emma realizes she might be crying. Her fingers itch to reach out, to comfort, to soothe. But she doesn’t know how, so she clenches her fingers into helpless fists and stares at the line of Regina’s neck in the moonlight.

 

“I know. And I am grateful for it every day. But I lost those years with him. And now he loves me again, but so soon, he’s going to grow up. He’ll move away to college and become an adult, and what then? I’ll be locked away in a giant house all alone. Again. With no one to love. No one who-” she breaks off.

 

“Hey, no.” Emma turns toward her and scoots forward an inch. “You’ll never be alone again. I know it isn’t the same, that family is different than a soulmate. But there are so many people who love you. Henry will never be gone even when he leaves. You _know_ he’s going to be one of those kids who Skypes you at least every couple days. You have my parents, who will probably be around so much you’ll want to strangle them. And Zelena, as long as she doesn’t decide she’d rather set you on fire again.”

 

This gets the tiniest breath that might be a chuckle, and Regina finally turns to face her. They are on separate pillows, faces a foot away.

 

Emma is seeing Regina’s eyes for the first time since the conversation took this turn, and the shadows she knows are under them blend in with the shades of dark and light playing across her face. She is so beautiful, Emma can hardly breathe. She wants to run her fingers along those shadows, pull her close, make sure she never hurts again.

 

“And you.”

 

It is a statement and a question.

 

She reaches out and grasps Regina’s hand in her own, squeezing it tightly as she meets the brown eyes across the pillows.

 

“You will _always_ have me,” and she meant for her voice to be reassuring in its strength, but instead it emerges a ferocious vow, as though she’ll tear apart any being who dares to attempt to make a liar of her.

 

Regina blinks and stares at her, her breath audible and her chest heaving in a way that would be distracting if Emma could look away from that expression in her eyes. Five seconds. Ten.

 

And she opens her mouth to say something else, but instead, Regina is leaning forward and kissing her.

 

Kissing her.

 

 _Regina_.

 

She has no idea what she had been about to say - hadn’t even really known then - because her world is tremoring at the edges and shrinking rapidly to the woman in front of her, to the feel of her soft lips against Emma’s.

 

Regina draws back, her eyes hesitant and sad and so, so dark.

 

“Is this alright?”

 

Emma tries to get her brain to work - to think the ugly words she should probably be remembering right about now.

 

“As long as it’s alright with you,” she says instead.

 

In answer, Regina nods, and Emma moves up a hand to grasp Regina’s cheek and pulls her in for another kiss.

 

Regina is trembling in her arms. Emma needs to be the strong one for her, but her throat is constricted to the point where she can barely breathe through the emotions cascading along her nerve endings. She might be shaking, too, and she draws closer until she can feel Regina’s warmth seeping into her skin.

 

Minutes pass as they do nothing but innocently kiss, hands grasping gently at shoulders, caressing throats, feathering through hair, as they pretend that no one here is shedding tears even though their kisses are salty, their cheeks damp.

 

Hesitantly, eventually, she nudges at Regina’s lips with her tongue, and the other woman acquiesces with a groan. The noise shoots heat straight down to Emma’s toes, and Regina begins moving restlessly, grasping at Emma’s waist as if she can’t pull her close enough.

 

Emma rolls over and slips her thigh between Regina’s legs and is rewarded by the other woman’s rough gasp against her ear, by the way her hips shift until she’s pressing her warm center even more firmly against Emma.

 

Emma breathes through her teeth at the sensation, tries to stop herself from grinding, not now, not this soon.

 

Instead, she slips her head down and runs her tongue along the inviting tendon in Regina’s neck. Regina’s hips undulate again.

 

Regina opens her eyes and looks straight into Emma’s. And she reaches up and takes Emma’s nipple into her mouth through the thin cotton of her tank top, waiting until Emma shudders at the feeling before she nips gently with her teeth.

 

 _Fuck_.

 

She thinks she probably says this out loud but isn’t entirely sure at this point. She bends down to kiss Regina again, because their mouths have been apart for too long, no matter how good it feels to have them elsewhere. This time, Regina’s tongue slips into her mouth almost immediately, and Emma sucks like she wishes she were sucking somewhere else, and Regina tugs at her shirt.

 

Emma takes the hint and disrobes from the waist up, and she reaches forward to unbutton Regina’s silk pajamas, slowly, pressing a kiss to each inch of skin as she bares it to her sight. Soon, she has unbuttoned enough that she can fold it open to reveal a dark nipple, and she feels her breath catch as she takes in the stiff peak.

 

She takes a brief detour from the buttons, leaning down to press a gentle kiss to the nipple before she opens her mouth and takes it inside.

 

Regina’s hands are tangling in her hair, pressing her closer, and her skin is the only thing Emma wants to taste for the rest of forever. She runs the flat of her tongue against the bud, and she can feel the simultaneous sensations of the cool breeze from the window caressing her back, Regina’s damp heat against her thigh, and her breast in her mouth. She shivers, suddenly remarkably closer to orgasm than she’d been only a moment before, and she draws back to blow a slow stream of air where Regina is still shiny and distended from her mouth.

 

Regina’s back arches off the bed, toward her warmth, and Emma shifts over to give her other nipple the same treatment. Then Regina is grasping her head and pulling her up toward her mouth again, and this time when they kiss, their breasts brush together in a feeling far more intimate than anything Emma has felt in a long while.

 

She presses her mouth against Regina’s neck and mouths nonsense words there, words she doesn’t know the meaning of, doesn’t even understand. She says nothing out loud, but Regina’s arms come up around her shoulders and hold her closer.

 

And then Regina is trying to roll them over, but Emma resists, sliding down until she can get Regina’s shirt completely open and off, and then she’s kissing her abdomen and playing with the edge of the silk bottoms until Regina pants, “ _Don’t...tease._ ”

 

So she pulls down both layers of fabric that separate her from skin, and she flicks her tongue against Regina’s clit once, and Regina inhales like she’s choking, except her fingers are grasping at Emma’s head and holding her firmly against her.

 

It takes less than a two minutes of Emma’s ministrations for Regina to begin shuddering against her mouth, her inner muscles clamping around Emma’s fingers like a vise.

 

Regina is quiet as she orgasms, holds her breath until she can’t anymore, and she’s panting against the pillows.

 

Emma moves up her body and sees the fresh tear tracks on the brunette’s cheeks, and she laves one with her tongue, then the other. Finally, she settles back against Regina’s lips, the other woman happy to draw her tongue into her mouth, and everything Emma tastes is her, musk and salt and warmth mingle until she can’t tell them apart and she just knows it’s _Regina_.

 

Emma is throbbing, wet and empty, but prepared to deal with it. This night is about Regina, not-

 

And Regina grasps her hips, pressing Emma’s aching core down onto her thigh, and Emma breathes out, hard. She feels her hips undulate instinctively, again and again. She is still in her underwear and pajama pants, but the idea of losing this contact makes her want to sob.

 

Regina presses kisses against her neck, sucks against the tender skin there while Emma feels the need within her growing exponentially.

 

When Regina takes both her nipples between her fingers and pinches them simultaneously, Emma breaks.

 

She makes a noise she isn’t sure can accurately be described as her body cracks apart and knits itself back together again. Regina holds her closer while she shakes, and then she’s holding Regina, and then they’re holding each other and there’s only one pillow, and the moonlight reflects off their tears as they curl together in a tangle of loose limbs and half-shed pajamas. And they sleep.

 

*

 

It is not supposed to become a regular thing.

 

Regina is grieving.

 

Emma is with someone else - tethered through hell and expectations, caught in a net she allowed herself to be tangled in before she realized it was going to drag her under.

 

But one month passes, then two. Whispers in the dark so easily turn into touches, shaking and hesitant becoming strong and sure. Lips spill secrets and leave marks that magic can erase as quickly as they appear.

 

They are healing through touch and words, through magic and silence.

 

They are friends - or at least friendly - in public again, though no one knows the exact details of when or how they made up.

 

They are not as subtle as they should be, probably. No one should believe that Emma still needs magic lessons in Regina’s vault anymore. But they make up some nonsense about light magic being different, about the subtle intricacies of both, about how Emma has to work even harder now that she doesn’t have the Dark One’s power to rely on anymore.

 

It isn’t as if anyone close to them knows enough about magic to really question them. And if they do, they’re just glad something is keeping Regina busy, that she isn’t going to snap into Evil Queen mode and set fire to the town any time soon.

 

Of course, Rumple would know, but he hasn’t made an appearance lately, too wrapped up in his own schemes. And Emma notices Zelena eyeing them speculatively from time to time, in a way that Emma should probably find concerning.

 

But their lie is built upon a kernel of truth, at least. Because they do spend some of the time researching magic, learning spells for the town’s protection, perfecting Emma’s technique on a few things. But that’s not what this time is, not for them. It’s about time away from the world’s expectations, time to simply be.

 

And eventually Emma realizes that this deception isn’t the lie she has been living.

 

It’s nearly the only thing in her life that’s the truth.

 

*

 

Hook shouts a lot when she breaks up with him, throwing around guilt trips and accusations and obscenities in equal measure.

 

She stands through it all, taking his angry words, because it isn’t as if she is blameless in this situation.

 

But the second he picks up a vase of flowers and hurls it at the wall beside her head, she freezes the object in mid-air and demands he get out of her house.

 

He goes silent, clenches his jaw, and storms past her and out the door.

 

He and the Jolly Roger are gone by sunset.

 

*

 

Her parents are confused but supportive, and Emma thanks them when they bring over some freshly made cookies and only stay long enough to kiss her on the forehead and tell her she’s welcome to come stay with them anytime.

 

But she’s a big girl.

 

And she doesn’t have the house to herself, after all. Regina is already there, watching the Charmings from her spot in the living room. Snow’s face softens when she sees the brunette in the background.

 

“It’s good that the two of you are spending time together. It’ll be nice for both of you. Some girl bonding time.”

 

Emma feels a really, _really_ inappropriate urge to laugh at just how closely she and Regina were “bonding” until about thirty seconds ago. She manages to subdue it, though her face must look weird with the effort, because Snow gives her a strange look until she smiles.

 

“Yeah. She’s really been here for me.”

 

Snow’s smile gets a little tearful. She reaches forward and pulls Emma into a quick hug before she grasps David’s shoulder, and they turn away from the door and leave her to her time with Regina.

 

Emma makes her way back to the couch, but instead of picking up where they left off, she just presses a quick kiss to Regina’s neck and holds her close and breathes.

 

*

 

They will tell everyone soon. But when, exactly, isn’t decided. _They_ don’t even know what they are to each other yet. It isn’t as easily defined as, “This fairy magic found your tattoo, so you are my soulmate.”

 

(Emma would probably hate it if it was. She’s always had a problem with authority.)

 

Two weeks after her break-up with Hook, she’s in the Mills mansion, relaxing on the couch in the living room while Henry is upstairs ostensibly doing his homework and Regina is in the kitchen putting the finishing touches on dinner.

 

“Emma.”

 

Zelena appears as if out of nowhere, standing in the middle of the living room, her curly hair down and soft around her shoulders, Robyn nestled safely in her arms.

 

But her eyes are nearly glowing with intensity, and it takes everything Emma has not to recoil.

 

Zelena takes a step forward, lowering her voice.

 

“If you hurt my baby sister, I will murder you so slowly you’ll pray for me to rip out your heart and crush it.”

 

Zelena seems to be under the impression that she needs to put Emma through some sort of Big Sister test. It’s sweet, if a little bizarre and misguided and, well, terrifying. But she’s going to pass it. She meets Zelena’s gaze head-on before she answers.

 

“Trust me, that’s the last thing I want to do. Ever. She’s had too much hurt in her life already.”

 

Zelena narrows her eyes at her for a few more moments, assessing, then her face resumes its normal, vaguely mocking expression.

 

“Good. Then we won’t have any problems.”

 

“Why would we be having problems?” Regina asks from the doorway, and Zelena turns.

 

“No reason, dearest sister. Emma and I were just discussing how she wasn’t going to steal my spot at the table. She can have the right side, where there’s a draft.”

 

“I always sit on the right side, anyway,” Emma mutters, brushing past her into the dining room.

 

“And my house is not drafty!” Regina defends as she starts up the stairs to fetch Henry for dinner, because heaven forbid she shout for him like Emma would. (Sometimes Emma does it just to make her flinch, but not today.)

 

Then Henry follows Regina down the stairs, and they eat dinner. Regina nitpicks about the way Henry and Emma both demolish their servings so quickly, but Emma just tosses her a grin and tells her it’s because the food is so delicious. After everyone is finished, Henry clears the dishes. Eyeing the looming stack in the sink, Zelena suddenly claims Robyn isn’t feeling well and needs her tender loving care and hightails it out of the kitchen. So Emma does the dishes and Regina dries and their shoulders brush as they stand together and listen to the sounds of Henry and Zelena bickering over who gets to pick the movie.

 

It’s dark outside, so Emma can see Regina’s reflection in the window above the sink, and the two of them together with their nearly identical height but contrasting eye- and hair-color and skin tones, they’re so perfectly picturesque. Emma finds this amusing in a weird way, because everything about them should be broken.

 

They are ghosts and fissures and jagged edges. They are hearts stomped into puzzle pieces and taped back together again.

 

They are undaunted tenacity and indefatigable strength.

 

Regina’s eyes are still sad occasionally.

 

But not when Emma takes a slightly soapy hand, grasps one of Regina’s, and presses it to her lips, looking up to meet the brunette’s eyes.

 

In that moment? She looks _happy_.

 

Emma feels her lips stretch into a smile as she turns back to the sink, only to catch a glimpse of a small scrap of paper sitting on the counter just to her left.

 

  * _Stop making googly eyes at each other and get in here, so we can start the movie._




 

Emma laughs, and Regina rolls her eyes and grumbles about what a mistake it was to teach Zelena their little spell.

 

“At least she’s trying to be subtle for us,” Emma whispers, turning to press a kiss to Regina’s ear.

 

“I wouldn’t put her to the test if I were you.”

 

“Good thing we’re finished here.”

 

Emma dries her hands and Regina puts away the last dish, and they turn to join their little family in the living room side-by-side.

 

Together, they take their broken pieces and begin to build.

 


End file.
